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Just curious need a bit of basic education between Nylon and Icarex. I know its been mentioned in the old forum before so need a bit of a refresher.

So I know Nylon is a bit heavier, it stretches more. Hence the response of a Nylon sail will typically be more sluggish compared to an Icarex sail? So they say Nylon stretches more over time. So if you fly a Nylon sail kite in high wind over a period of time, is it going to stretch to the point of deteriorating the kite? Also how about washing a Nylon sail kite or dipping it in the water? Is I a good idea to give the Nylon kite a bath and frame it all up assembled to dry with the sail still been stretched?

As suspected/stated, nylon absorbs moisture. This is a huge deal if you fly at the ocean, on damp or foggy days. Still, I have a few older carrington sailed Bensons that are among my favorites. They fly just fine, even after many years, fully tensioned, in my bag. Depends on what you like to do, I suppose.

Everything being equal, poly & nylon kites can "feel" different on the lines. Problem is, everything is very rarely (never) equal.

Nylon is generally as much as 50% heavier than poly. Many nylons are.75oz and common polys are .5 or .6.

I think the evenly distributed weight gain has more to do with the difference in flight characteristics than the additional stretch in nylon. The "give" in nylon makes a difference, but the weight of the sail is a bigger factor.

Whatever, I really like nylon sails on some kites. I've had the same kite in both a number of times and the difference can be somewhat hard to describe. I've never had it explained, but I've always wondered if the surface texture of the material makes a difference.

Remember the old school kites with sail patterns meant to take advantage of nylon sails stretching the more they were flown? Starting with TOTL's sunrise spinoffs, team hawaiian chevrons, and of course the NSR, but there were others....

Sea Devil standards come in nylon by design, and in many ways, I like how these sails fly better than their icky equivalent. When in real meaty standard winds (+7mph), the kite has a bit more weight all around which gives it an edge I think. As Allen said, this can be good for many tricks, as well as for the overall feel of the kite. I think if you imagine ligher winds, nylon limits the lower end of the wind range.

In my imagination, I might think that nylon has a good application in vented or 'heavy standard' applications, although in reality, you don't see it much. I could imagine a nylon Deep Space for strong winds, for example, might be pretty handy?

obi

Logged

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return." L daVinci

i flew a mid vent master control by lam a while back and whatever the sail was made of felt very, very different, but it served the kite really well. i have no idea what the material was, but it flew how i would expect parchment would fly, real parchment (paper thin stretched animal skin). it was the same color too, sort of natural off white tan.

it buzzed around the sky with a zing to corners. making a snappy turn with it sounded like a bee flying past your ear at speed. it was quite fascinating.

does that sound like carrington?

sorry to not contribute to the ny/icky conversation but i hadn't run across another sail with a similar feel and the topic doesn't come up very often.

Interesting insights. So I gather a few more conclusions and comparisons.

Nylon - Stretchier, good for bumpy and higher wind, helps to cushion intermittent gustsIcarex - Better Low Wind range. Might not be a good candidate for gusty wind due to the immediate feedback felt on the sail.

Kind of like an off-hand analogy of:

Nylon - Flexible Spars like the cheaper Dynamic Spars, some seen as weaker spars but might be able to absorb gusts better because they are bendierIcarex - Stiff spars like those Skyshark Black Diamonds

Everything being equal, poly & nylon kites can "feel" different on the lines. Problem is, everything is very rarely (never) equal.

Whatever, I really like nylon sails on some kites. I've had the same kite in both a number of times and the difference can be somewhat hard to describe. I've never had it explained, but I've always wondered if the surface texture of the material makes a difference.

Right on Allen.

Reed has told me mylar is a lot more slippery in the air than fabric. Mark can probably detect slight differences pretty damn well after all these years, but I doubt many others can. Kite makers like him have the chance to try out all different version of the same kite and that makes it a lot easier to understand what's going on.

I have flown an all mylar illusion and it did feel different than a standard. I may have fooled myself.

I always come back to the fact that most kiters don't even notice huge problems with their kite. Unequal line length, standoff fell out or slid out of position, bridle messed up yadah yadah. The other biggie is flying in crap wind. It's hard to detect subtle changes when the wind is all over the place. Nylon or polly should be the least of their concerns.

I think more important than the intrinsic differences between the different sail fabrics are the way given kite designs respond to them. I have made Machines in nylon (original design), Texlon polyester (short-lived experiment), and Icarex. All flavors of Machine responded much better to Icarex - not what I was necessarily expecting, but that's the way it turned out. It's a relatively heavy kite that's happy in fairly strong winds, but Icarex just worked better.

OTOH I know that most of the standard and vented designs Shawn T. has developed have been much better in nylon.

Is it that small differences in kite design make one fabric a better choice than another, or the design of the kite subtly "leaning" towards the fabric the designer prefers? Who knows. I put this in the same category as "is one standoff better than 2, or 3?" Once again the answer is a resolute "it depends...."

I've had/got both the New Tech Big Bang and Big Bang Pro and I'm not afraid to admit it !!! Same kite apart from the Pro has an ICan'tBelieveIt'sNotIcarex sail to the non-Pro's nameless nylon. In reasonable winds there's no more than that utterly elusive feel difference between them that is just an artsy word for personal preference. But in bumpy winds the Pro is closest thing I've found to unflyable.

In this case the nylon sail's stretch and give help out whereas the polyester's more immediate reaction do quite the opposite.

But the last word should go to the noted maker of thousand dollar kites... it depends.

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